APA Puts a New Twist on Productivity Improvements

The latest Drilling Productivity Report from the EIA, released yesterday (February 13, 2017), shows that while the combined rig count in the seven major U.S. shale plays rose about 25% in the fourth quarter of 2016 versus the previous quarter, and the number of wells drilled was up 29%, well completions were up a paltry 1%, leading to an increase in the inventory of drilled-but-uncompleted wells (DUCs). Completions accelerated a bit in January 2017, but DUCs still continued to rise. That certainly seems counterintuitive.  With crude oil prices stable in the low $50’s over the past few months you might think that producers would be pulling DUCs out of inventory, and in fact there have been statements to that effect in several producer investor calls. This is not just an exercise in energy fundamentals numerology. If the DUC inventory is increasing, then production will not be ramping up as fast as the growing rig count would imply. But what if, as some early signs indicate, the historical relationships are out of whack and the DUC inventory isn’t growing but rather declining? In that case, forecast models could be understating the outlook for production growth, and the market could be in for a more rapid and steeper rebound in oil and gas production than many expect. In today’s blog, we delve into the DUC inventory data and its potential upside risk to production forecasts.

The oil and gas industry is always working to develop the most efficient methods for unlocking more hydrocarbons. To cut costs and maximize output from their acreage, some companies are rolling out more creative well designs, such as U-turn (aka “horseshoe”) and J-hook wells, which use dramatic, 180-degree underground turns to access more oil and gas from each location. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the benefits of these approaches and the technical hurdles associated with drilling these deep bends underground. 

Back in the early 2000s, the outlook for energy security in the U.S. was bleak. Domestic oil production had been on a steady decline since 1985 and gas production was also well off its apex in the 1970s. M. King Hubbert’s concept of peak oil ignited fears of eventual energy scarcity. Given fossil fuels’ ubiquity underlying our entire Western economic and industrial structure, it’s no wonder that folks were concerned. But then the Shale Revolution changed everything. It’s often been said that necessity is the mother of invention and, after many trials and with considerable ingenuity, U.S. producers learned to wring massive volumes of previously trapped hydrocarbons from shale and gave the U.S. energy industry a new lease on life. But there are still limits on how much crude oil, natural gas and NGLs can be economically produced — and concerns lately that the best of the U.S.’s shale resources may have already been exploited. In today’s RBN blog, we examine crude oil and gas reserves: how they are estimated and what they tell us about the longevity of U.S. production.